Security systems are often installed within residential, commercial, industrial, or governmental buildings. Some examples of these buildings include offices, hospitals, casinos, warehouses, academic institutions, or shopping malls. The security systems are generally comprised of security devices such as security camera systems (or camera systems), motion sensors, alarms, fingerprint scanners, and access control readers, to a list a few examples.
Many of the security systems utilize motorized security camera systems to capture images, such as video content (or data), of scenes. One example of a motorized security camera system is a pan-tilt-zoom (or PTZ) camera system. Typically, PTZ camera systems are manually operated by an operator (e.g., security personnel) via a control mechanism, such as a joystick.
One problem with manually operated security camera systems is that when the security camera systems are not in use, they are often left facing in a “wrong” direction when events of interest are occurring. Thus, the camera systems often fail to capture objects or events of interest.
To alleviate the problem of potentially missing objects or events of interest, many security camera systems implement automated guard tours. A guard tour is comprised of a series of preset fields of view (camera or lens orientations) and zoom levels, which are referred to as set points. In operation, a positioning system of the security camera system automatically moves the camera system from one set point to another in a predefined order or at random. This movement from one set point to another changes the lens orientation of the camera system and thus also changes the field of view of the camera system.
Even when an automated guard tour is running, the security camera systems may still miss events of interest. This is because the guard tour is often comprised of set points and the security camera systems may be positioned at a “wrong” set point when the event is occurring. Alternatively, the events of interest could occur in a field of view that is not covered by any of the set points of the camera systems. Additionally, if objects or events of interest are in motion, the objects or events may move out of the field of view of the security camera system. Yet another problem with the guard tours is that the set points include predefined zoom levels. Thus, the security camera systems may be zoomed out too far to capture details of the object or event. Similarly, the security camera systems may be zoomed in too far and miss events due to a narrow field of view of the set point.
Recently, video content analysis tools have been developed for security camera systems to enable the security camera systems to automatically identify and track objects or events of interest. This feature may even be combined with guard touring. Once the motion is detected, the security camera systems suspend the guard tour and initiate tracking of the objects or events of interest.